Lincoln Home National Historic Site: 426 S. Seventh St. Pick up free timed tickets for house tours in the visitor center, which also contains exhibits and a gift shop. Other period homes also open for self-guided tours. Daily 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Info: (217) 492-4150,
www.nps.gov/liho

Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices: Sixth and Adams streets. See where Lincoln practiced his pre-presidential trade. Tuesday-Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from the day after Labor Day to April 30; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily all other times. Free. Info: (217) 785-7289

Old State Capitol: 1 Old State Capitol Plaza. Peek into rooms where significant Lincoln moments happened. Free tours. Same hours as the law offices.

He was an attentive father and a devoted husband, an impassioned lawyer and a grandiloquent speaker, a generous neighbor and a dog-loyal friend. He was not, however, the 16th president of the United States. At least not yet.

Springfield, Ill., covers the clean-shaven period of Abraham Lincoln’s life, from 1837, when he arrived in the newly minted state capital, to 1861, when he boarded the train bound for Washington and the White House. The city 200 miles south of Chicago claims to contain more Lincoln sites than any other destination in the country.

As the president-elect proclaimed in his farewell address at the train station on Monroe and 10th streets: “Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything.”

According to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, of the world’s notable figures, Lincoln has received more ink than anyone else except Jesus. And earlier this month, the president stepped into the Hollywood starlight in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln,” based on a Doris Kearns Goodwin biography. The new film focuses on the final months of his presidency. But he flourished professionally and personally during the Springfield years.

Most of the Lincoln sites fan out along an easy-to-navigate grid in Springfield’s modest downtown. The Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices, for example, sit across the square from the Old State Capitol, which is opposite the bank that safeguards a ledger of Lincoln’s financial transactions. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is four blocks from the National Park Service’s Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Cut left on Monroe and you’ll hit the Lincoln Depot, where the president-elect bade Springfield a final adieu, or hop over to Seventh Street and you’ll pass the First Presbyterian Church, where the Lincolns rented a red-cushioned pew for 10 years.